Adobe Unveils Next Generation of Creative Cloud

Adobe has unveiled the next generation of its Creative Cloud suite, including four brand new applications, Adobe XD CC for experience design, Adobe Dimension CC for 2D to 3D compositing, Character Animator CC for 2D animation, and an all-new cloud-based photography service, Adobe Photoshop Lightroom CC. In addition, Adobe announced feature updates to its flagship applications including Photoshop CC, InDesign CC, Illustrator CC and Premiere Pro CC, and ongoing expansion of its Adobe Stock service.

All of these updates include capabilities powered by Adobe Sensei, Adobe’s artificial intelligence and machine learning platform, and are the latest in a series of innovations from Adobe that serve modern creative professionals and enthusiasts wherever and however they work. From the rapidly expanding system of mobile-first applications or the recent addition of branded, premium features to Adobe Spark, Adobe is building out a range of fast, flexible solutions for creative projects of all types.

“Adobe continues to lead the creative revolution, driving modernization and innovation that will accelerate the creative process across all platforms and devices,” said Bryan Lamkin, executive vice president and general manager, Digital Media at Adobe. “Today, we unveiled a new generation of Creative Cloud, with a wide spectrum of capabilities—from new experience design, 2D animation and 3D rendering apps to an all-new, cloud-based photography service. These tools enable creative professionals and enthusiasts to express themselves and reach their full creative potential anytime, anywhere, on any device.”

In addition to seeing Adobe’s latest innovation, attendees will hear from the world’s best creative minds including designer Jonathan Adler, actor and director Jon Favreau, photographer Annie Griffiths and music producer and DJ Mark Ronson. MAX also brings together major technology companies such as Microsoft, CDW, Dell, Google, HP and Intel, as well as design-first, creative brands such as Coca-Cola, Airstream, Pantone and Moleskine.

Adobe’s new creative applications include:

Adobe XD CC : Developed in open partnership with the design community through a public beta, Adobe XD is the all-in-one cross-platform solution for designing and prototyping mobile apps and websites. Created by designers for designers, Adobe XD delivers the necessary speed, precision and quality to go from static comps or wireframes to fully interactive prototypes in minutes.

Adobe Dimension CC : Previously Project Felix, Dimension gives graphic designers the power and flexibility of 3D with the ease and simplicity of working with 2D. Dimension enables graphic designers to quickly create and iterate on photorealistic 3D images to realize branding and packaging designs in real-world settings.

Adobe Character Animator CC : Previously in beta and launching today, this 2D animation tool helps bring still image artwork from Photoshop or Illustrator to life. Character Animator has been showcased on primetime shows including “The Late Show” with Stephen Colbert, “The Simpsons” and Jim Cramer’s “Mad Money.” New features include pose-to-pose blending, new physics behaviors and visual puppet controls. Adobe Sensei also helps improve lip-sync capability by accurately matching mouth shapes with spoken sounds.

Lightroom CC, meanwhile, is Adobe’s all-new cloud-centric photo service for editing, organising, storing and sharing photos – from anywhere. Designed for professionals and enthusiasts, Lightroom CC features a more intuitive user interface, enables powerful editing in full resolution, and automatically synchronizes changes across mobile, desktop and the web. Lightroom CC makes organizing photography collections easier with features like searchable keywords that are automatically applied without the hassle of tagging. And Lightroom CC makes it simple to share photos on social media.

Adobe also announced performance and editing updates to Photoshop Lightroom Classic CC (previously known as Photoshop Lightroom CC) which continues to focus on a more traditional desktop-first workflow. These performance and editing improvements include an enhanced Embedded Preview workflow that enables users to scroll through large sets of photos to select a subset of images significantly faster than before.

Adobe After Effects CC improves the efficiency of motion graphics creation by streamlining your ability to create data-driven graphics and deliver high-quality VR and 3D results. And it does it all faster with GPU performance enhancements.

Adobe Stock now features an expanded asset collection with the introduction of hundreds of professionally-created motion graphics templates for video users in Premiere CC and After Effects CC. The marketplace now has over 100 million assets including photos, illustrations, videos and vectors.

Adobe Typekit now leverages Adobe Sensei to provide a whole new way to search for fonts. Users can submit their own photos of type and find similar fonts available on Typekit. The new Typekit visual search technology is also the first Adobe Sensei-powered service that will be available to third-party developers.

Adobe has also announced the launch of AdobeLIVE on Behance, a livestreaming channel where 10 million Behance community members can learn from and inspire each other. The channel now features 24 hours of weekly programming, and will expand to 24/7 programming starting in 2018.